Minutes of APO 3.5m User's Committee Phone Conference Monday, July 14, 1997 Attending: Ed Kibblewhite, Julie Lutz, Rene Walterbos, Bruce Gillespie, Ed Turner (Chair), Michael Strauss (taking minutes), Chris Stubbs, Alan Uomoto not available. Agenda: The scheduling of shutdowns Slip of August-September shutdown. Twilight time: who gets it? Community meeting in September Getting User Feedback at the end of a run Miscellaneous News Scheduling Engineering Shutdowns Ed Turner sent around a plan for scheduling major engineering shutdowns (as opposed to one-night engineering runs) in apo35-general #152 (July 2). It has been very difficult to accurately schedule major shutdowns months in advance, and Ed's plan suggests simply scheduling the telescope fully, and scheduling shutdowns as little as two weeks in advance; engineering shutdown should be seen to be like bad weather. Stubbs: UW view of scheduling shutdown: Generally, people are supportive of telescope getting fixed. However, there was no enthusiasm for getting stomped on. People would *much* rather have a schedule that we could all believe. Unfortunately, this would probably require a full-time project manager. Another suggestion: shut the telescope down completely for a quarter, and fix *everything*. In practice, this would take many more people than we have available. The problem is partly psychological: If you have time scheduled, and it is pre-empted for engineering maintenance work (as opposed to fixing some emergency that keeps you from working), you can always argue that they should wait a few days until your program is done, and boot the *next* observer off the telescope. Many ideas were traded back and forth, with no consensus as to the best approach. A possibility: telescope scheduled by institution, not by individuals. Do the individual scheduling, say, 2 weeks in advance. This is quite a radical change for solving a very specific problem. Especially for places with small amount of time (e.g., Washington State). What about synoptic projects? In general, the user's committee was unenthusiastic about block scheduling. A possibility: schedule an engineering shutdown period at the end of each quarter, then if you decide you need a shutdown earlier than that, you switch people around. A risk: if you schedule shutdowns only when everyone is ready, you'll *never* be completely ready! You'll never get going! Why not simply label those programs close to a shutdown that their time might be rescheduled or cancelled? Part of the problem is that you can't reschedule a person who loses time to a shutdown for a full quarter, at which time their object may no longer be reachable. How about scheduling once a month? This is the way things were done earlier, but it made things just too fragmented. How about scheduling quarterly, but iterating the schedule further each month, with feedback from each institution? Strauss: none of these approaches will work for enormous shutdowns like the 5.5 week shutdown coming next month! Ed will try to put this all together and post a compromise. Scheduling of Twilight Time: There is a perception in the community that it is an imposition on the observatory to ask to use twilight time; after all, the schedule only includes the time between evening and morning astronomical twilights. The current policy is as follows: the twilight time is offered to first (or last) program of the night, unless engineering needs to be done during that time (a problem roughly 10% of the time). Thus this time is available. However, the observing specialists are not in a position to do your twilight calibrations (e.g., flats) for you; you have to be there to do the work. Ed Turner's quasar monitoring program is often the first or last program of the night; it therefore formally owns the corresponding twilight time, although it doesn't always use it, and the other programs of the night can use it, especially if the instrument in question is DIS. Gillespie: let's not schedule twilight formally; this brings up too many problems. APO User's Meeting September 19-20 at APO Rene Walterbos is putting it together, and will post a detailed announcement. There is no agenda yet, but it will cover the 3-year plan progress (cf., http://www.astro.princeton.edu/APO/3yrplan_update.ps), and science that people are doing with the telescope. The effect of the August-September Shutdown slip The schedule for the August-September shutdown slipped several weeks (thus prompting the discussion on scheduling these shutdowns, above) (apo35-general #148, 149). This has caused a number of users to be rescheduled. Ed Turner has gotten very little feedback on this; is everyone able to live with this? Let him know ASAP if not. User Feedback at the end of the Run Strauss suggested that there be a way for the observer to enter a report for a night or a run, saying how things went, both good and bad, from the observer's point of view. Is this something that should be included in the night logs? Filing such a report would allow: 1. Frustrations to be vented; 2. The successes of the observatory to be disseminated; 3. Recurrent subtle problems to be diagnosed; 4. The observer's perspective to be monitored. There already exists a problem reports web page at APO, which most observers are probably unaware of: http://www.apo.nmsu.edu/Databases/send-pr.html This is appropriate for problems needing specific engineering attention. We thus probably need another way to post more general comments, some of which may be positive. Apparently Paula Szkody has thought about this previously; Strauss will contact her. Miscellaneous News from Gillespie: New air slits are being made for DIS Alan Watson is procuring new (narrow-band?) filters for GRIM. The Fermilab Drift Scan Camera has officially been retired. Jeff Sundval (sp) from Chicago, came by starting to reconnoiter for the installation of the echelle. Last month's meeting minutes approved. Next meeting is Monday, September 8, 1997. 12:30 EDT; we will skip a month. APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 154 in the apo35-general archive. You can find APO the archive on http://www.astro.princeton.edu/APO/apo35-general/INDEX.html APO To join/leave the list, send mail to apo35-request@astro.princeton.edu APO To post a message, mail it to apo35-general@astro.princeton.edu APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO